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Books from David Bowie’s 2013 Reading List

  1. 10

    The Iliad

    Homer, Emily Wilson · 2023

  2. 11

    As I Lay Dying

    William Faulkner · 1915

  3. 12

    Berlin Alexanderplatz

    Alfred Döblin

  4. 13

    Inside the whale, and other essays

    George Orwell · 1940

  5. 14

    Mr Norris Changes Trains

    Christopher Isherwood · 1935

  6. 15

    Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art

    James A. Hall · 1985

  7. 16

    David Bomberg

    Richard Cork · 1987

  8. 17

    Passing

    Nella Larsen, Matthew Hodgson, Tamar Mishmar · 1929

  9. 18

    Beyond the brillo box

    Arthur Coleman Danto · 1992

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About this collection83 items

David Bowie’s 2013 reading selection ranges from Madame Bovary and Berlin Alexanderplatz to music history, philosophy and essays.

Source: https://www.davidbowie.com/blog/2013/10/1/bowies-top-100-books-the-complete-list

Numbers show collection order, not a source rating.

  1. Interviews with Francis Bacon — David Sylvester
  2. Billy Liar — Keith Waterhouse
  3. Room at the Top — Braine, John
  4. On Having No Head — Douglas Edison Harding
  5. Kafka was the rage — Anatole Broyard
  6. A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess
  7. City of Night — John Rechy
  8. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — Junot Díaz
  9. Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert
  10. The Iliad — Homer, Emily Wilson
  11. As I Lay Dying — William Faulkner
  12. Berlin Alexanderplatz — Alfred Döblin
  13. Inside the whale, and other essays — George Orwell
  14. Mr Norris Changes Trains — Christopher Isherwood
  15. Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art — James A. Hall
  16. David Bomberg — Richard Cork
  17. Passing — Nella Larsen, Matthew Hodgson, Tamar Mishmar
  18. Beyond the brillo box — Arthur Coleman Danto
  19. The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind — Julian Jaynes
  20. In Bluebeard's castle — George Steiner, G. Steiner
  21. Hawksmoor — Peter Ackroyd
  22. The Divided Self — R. D. Laing
  23. Infants of the spring — Wallace Thurman
  24. The Songlines — Bruce Chatwin
  25. Nights at the circus — Angela Carter
  26. The Master and Margarita — Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков
  27. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie — Muriel Spark
  28. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
  29. Herzog — Saul Bellow
  30. Puckoon — Spike Milligan
  31. Black Boy — Richard Wright
  32. The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
  33. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea — 三島由紀夫
  34. Darkness at noon — Arthur Koestler
  35. McTeague — Frank Norris
  36. Money — Martin Amis
  37. The outsider. — Colin Wilson
  38. Strange People — Frank Edwards
  39. English journey — J. B. Priestley
  40. A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole
  41. The Day of the Locust — Nathanael West
  42. 1984 — XAVIER COSTE, George Orwell
  43. The life and times of Little Richard — White, Charles
  44. Mystery train — Greil Marcus
  45. White Noise — Don DeLillo, Mosche Hana'ami
  46. Sweet Soul Music — Peter Guralnick
  47. Writers at work — Malcolm Cowley
  48. The sound of the city — Charlie Gillett
  49. Octobriana, and the Russian underground — Peter Sadecky
  50. The street — Ann Lane Petry, Ann Petry
  51. Wonder Boys — Michael Chabon
  52. Last Exit to Brooklyn — Hubert Selby, Jr., Hubert Selby Jr.
  53. A people's history of the United States — Howard Zinn, Kathy Emery, Ellen Reeves, Matt Damon, Howard Zinn
  54. The age of American unreason — Susan Jacoby, Cassandra Campbell
  55. Metropolitan Life — Fran Lebowitz
  56. The Coast of Utopia — Tom Stoppard
  57. The bridge — Hart Crane
  58. All The Emperors Horses — David Kidd
  59. Fingersmith — Sarah Waters
  60. Earthly Powers — Anthony Burgess
  61. The 42nd Parallel — John Dos Passos
  62. Tales of beatnik glory — Ed Sanders
  63. The bird artist — Howard A. Norman
  64. Before the deluge — Otto Friedrich
  65. Sexual Personae — Camille Paglia
  66. The American way of death — Jessica Mitford
  67. In Cold Blood — Truman Capote
  68. Lady Chatterly's Lover — D. H. Lawrence
  69. Teenage — Jon Savage
  70. Vile Bodies — Evelyn Waugh
  71. The hidden persuaders — Vance Packard
  72. The Fire Next Time — James Baldwin
  73. Selected Poems — Frank O'Hara
  74. The trial of Henry Kissinger — Christopher Hitchens
  75. Flaubert's Parrot — Julian Barnes
  76. On the Road — Jack Kerouac
  77. Zanoni — Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton
  78. The gnostic Gospels — Elaine Pagels
  79. The Divine Comedy of Dante — Dante Alighieri
  80. A Grave for a Dolphin — Alberto Denti di Pirajno
  81. The Insult — Rupert Thomson
  82. In Between the Sheets — Ian McEwan
  83. A people's tragedy — Orlando Figes